Kathryn Tickell honoured by Queen

Jan 16 2009 by David Whetstone, The Journal

KATHRYN TICKELL has been called the queen of the Northumbrian pipes and now she is to be honoured by the Queen.

The celebrated musician, who has done more than most to popularise an instrument native to the North East, is to be only the fourth recipient of the Queen’s Medal for Music.

She will also be the first instrumentalist to receive the annual honour since it was instigated in 2005, the others being conductor Sir Charles Mackerras, Welsh tenor Bryn Terfel and composer Judith Weir.

Approved by the Queen, the silver medal is presented to an individual or group judged to have had a major influence on the nation’s musical life.

The Northumberland-born musician will be presented with the medal in a private audience with the Queen later in the year.

A formal announcement of the honour will be made by the Master of the Queen’s Music, composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, at The Sage Gateshead on January 26. In a statement released yesterday by Buckingham Palace, Sir Peter described Kathryn Tickell as “the foremost Northumbrian pipes player, a great composer and a wonderful all-round musician”.

He said the honour also acknowledged her work in music education “and in putting the pipes and the music of her own part of England back among the public where it belongs, and also spreading a love of this music throughout the whole world”.

Kathryn Tickell has earned many accolades since she started learning to play the Northumbrian pipes – strictly speaking, the Northumbrian small pipes – when she was nine years old.

At the age of 16, when she was living with her family in Jesmond, Newcastle, she was made the Lord Mayor’s Piper in a revival of an ancient tradition.

At the time she was a pupil at Gosforth High School and had already made two records and appeared on BBC Television’s Blue Peter.

Now 41, she is a respected figure on the international music scene.

In 1999 she was appointed one of the founding staff for the new degree course in folk and traditional music at Newcastle University.

In 2005 she was judged musician of the year in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and two years later she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Northumbria University.

Last November she was appointed artistic director of Folkworks, meaning she will oversee the folk music programme at The Sage Gateshead and around the country. Alongside her successful performing and recording career, Kathryn has done a lot of work with young people. In 1997 she founded the Young Musicians’ Fund, which helps talented young musicians in the region to realise their ambitions.

Then, in 2002, she became artistic director of Folkestra, an ensemble of the region’s best young folk musicians. Three years ago Sir Peter Maxwell Davies composed a piece of music specially for Kathryn.

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